What’s deadlier â€” Islam or our own cowardice?

(Lurch) Kerry blamed ‘poverty’. The Guardian dimbulbs blamed ‘globull worming’. Â Mooch, otherwise known asÂ Michelle Obama, wife of the US president, also refused to mention “Muslim” or “jihad”, raging only against some undefined “terrorist group” that was “determined to keep these girls from getting an education”.

Former prime minister Juliar G-Lard took the same evasive line, turning a bloody Islamist jihad into deplorable “violence against girls who are seeking an education”.

EXACTLY what do the Left think those Boko Haram jihadists are doing in Nigeria?

I thought it was as obvious as a bomb in a bus. Boko Haram has declared war on Christians and on Western education, and demanded all western Africa be put under sharia law.Â It’s since murdered thousands of civilians, bombed churches, massacred schoolboys and enslaved girls, including more than 200 abducted from a boarding school last month.Â And their leader insists his faith made him do all this, even sell girls as slaves: “Allah says I should sell.” . . .Â As the Koran consulted by Boko Haram says: “We have made lawful to thee … those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war.”

In other words, we have yet another Islamist terrorist group on our hands.

…this latest kidnapping is so startling that many of the Left have finally had to notice a conflict that has risked them having to say hard things about Islam.

Yet even now the cowardice â€” intellectual and physical â€” kicks in.

Last week I noted Waleed Aly, an Islamic apologist turned ABC broadcaster, Fairfax columnist and even academic at a Monash University terrorism studies centre, could not bring himself to say Boko Haram was an Islamist group.

He is far from alone. The next night on the same TV show, former Australian Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja suggested the kidnapping of the girls “highlights … the prevalence of slavery … but also access to education”.

And so Michelle Obama, wife of the US president, also refused to mention “Muslim” or “jihad”, raging only against some undefined “terrorist group” that was “determined to keep these girls from getting an education”.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard took the same evasive line, turning a bloody Islamist jihad into deplorable “violence against girls who are seeking an education”.

Over atÂ PJ MediaÂ I examine five reasons why it shouldn’t have taken so long for Hillary Clinton’s State Department to declare Boko Haram a terrorist group:

5. The abduction of the schoolgirls is only the latest in a huge string of atrocities.
The world has only begun to notice them because of the abduction of the schoolgirls, but the Nigerian jihad terror group Boko Haram has been around for years. Without attracting the international outrage they have drawn upon themselves now, they have committed innumerable acts of unimaginable savagery,Â murdering over 2,500 peopleÂ in the first three months of 2014 alone andÂ torchingÂ numerousÂ churchesÂ andÂ ChristianÂ homes.

At my websiteÂ Jihad WatchÂ a Google search turns up aboutÂ 115,000 resultsÂ for “Boko Haram,” indicating that anyone who has been tracking jihad activity over the last few years has had plenty to track in Boko Haram, and that the outrage over the abducted schoolgirls, as welcome as it is if it results in genuine action to stop this brutal and bloody group, is quite late and arbitrary.

Of course, in the Obama administration it hasn’t been fashionable to talk about jihad activity other than within the context of al Qaeda, and Boko Haram is not al Qaeda. Therefore it essentially did not exist (either for the administration or for the mainstream media that it carries around in its pocket like so many nickels), or if it did, it wasn’t a terrorist group: Hillary Clinton’s State Department wasnotoriously slow to designate itÂ as such, even as the dead bodies piled up.

4. Their real name is Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad.Boko HaramÂ means “Western education is sin,” or more literally, “Books bad.” The mainstream media has reported this as if the group were a bunch of Luddites with AK-47s – people who for some unexplained reason object to modern technology except for the weaponry. But actually the moniker “Boko Haram” is a specifically Islamic name, referring to the sinfulness of any system of education that is not based and centered upon the Qur’an and Islam.

And the actual name of the group is not Boko Haram at all; it is the Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad. Sunnah is accepted Islamic practice as derived from the Qur’an and Hadith; dawah is Islamic proselytizing; and jihad, of course, is (according to mainstream Islamic tradition) primarily warfare against unbelievers in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. Clearly, then, the group’s focus and motivation is entirely Islamic – which is probably why the media never calls the group by its actual name: too much focus on Islam in connection with terrorism is, for the media, as verboten for today’s media as it would have been forÂ Der StÃ¼rmerÂ to run a piece favorable to Jews.3. Muslim clerics recruit for them in mosques.
The British tabloidÂ The SunÂ reported in late April that “Nigerian Muslim clerics living in the border towns of Cameroon and Nigeria are recruiting Boko Haram members in their mosques, the government of Cameroon has alleged.” It quoted StrategyPage, an American military news site:

Cameroon is also concerned about pro-Boko Haram clerics from Nigeria quietly preaching and recruiting for Boko Haram in Cameroon mosques. Islamic conservative clergy are not unusual on either side of the border, but those who do not denounce Boko Haram are suspected of quietly recruiting young men to join the “jihad” (struggle) and fight (and often die) in Nigeria.

Why would Muslim clerics, no matter how “conservative,” recruit in mosques for a group that – it is universally assumed – twists and hijacks the true, peaceful religion of Islam? Haven’t these clerics been trained in the Qur’an and aren’t they utterly familiar with its contents? Did they overlook the peaceful verses that Boko Haram is ostensibly ignoring?

This recruitment gives the lie yet again to the mainstream media and government dogma that Islamic jihad groups actually pervert the teachings of Islam. If they did, Muslim clerics, above all, would know that and oppose them. Yet Muslim clerics, all too often, are enthusiastic in their support of such groups, and sometimes even participate in them. But that fact is not one that our law enforcement or military establishment is willing, at this point, to ponder.